


all the medicine

by downpours



Series: projecting my issues onto klaus hargreeves [2]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Drug Addiction, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, I’m looking at you Steve Blackman, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Klaus Hargreeves Whump, Klaus’ addiction is treated seriously, Smart Klaus Hargreeves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:28:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26890675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/downpours/pseuds/downpours
Summary: Klaus had always been secretly smart. It was a shame his siblings didn't see how much he lost by poisoning his brain.
Series: projecting my issues onto klaus hargreeves [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1980548
Comments: 3
Kudos: 144





	all the medicine

**Author's Note:**

> hargreeves siblings empathize with drug addicts challenge!!  
> (until they do enjoy this self-indulgent addiction vent fic where i put klaus through hell)
> 
> title from medicine - daughter

Klaus had always been secretly smart.

His siblings were used to calling him dumb or lazy when he asked to copy homework or missed his fifth lesson in a row. He didn’t try to do well in classes, but when he did, he was pretty phenomenal. Reginald knew this ( _you were my greatest disappointment, Number Four_ ). However, Klaus had some secret satisfaction that despite his lack of effort, he held the highest score in chemistry—even higher than Five. It came naturally to him; balancing chemicals to reach a state of calm equilibrium. He liked picturing that it was possible to do that with his brain. Like if he mixed the perfect amount of uppers and downers in his bloodstream, he could cancel out all his trauma and be stripped to the child he was before he was ruined.

His drug addiction was methodical, scientific—not recreational. No twelve year old turns to hard drugs for fun. Klaus tampered with dozens of combinations of depressants and amphetamines until he could find the reaction that finally numbed him down to a point of calm (but not so calm he’d pass out—it was a delicate balance). Sometimes he shot too far. Sometimes he’d end up meeting God instead of the cloudy insobriety he aimed for, but, well.

No risk, no reward.

And when his tolerance increased, Klaus tinkered with the dosage and introduced a new substance into his pharmaceutical solution. He wrote down dosages and outcomes in chicken scratch in his otherwise empty schoolwork notebooks. This shit should count for lab credit, he thought absently. His brain was never calm, and the ghosts and trauma didn’t help. Despite what his siblings thought, there was a hell of a lot more going on in that polluted head of his. Even though he never showed up to classes, Reginald knew that the few tests he showed up to take yielded some of the highest scores in the Academy.

But that didn’t matter. Because Klaus—junkie, stupid, Klaus—would never be able to prove to his siblings how much he really felt, thought, or experienced. He would always be the lookout: uncaring, thoughtless, useless. They would never know that the only reason he poisoned himself was because the other option was going medically insane from the screams of ghosts. That he only spoke in crude jokes because it was the only way to mask how traumatized he really was. He wasn’t anything more than a junkie that happened to be their brother.

Klaus was fine with this. Well, maybe not _fine_ , but he’d long ago accepted it. His chemical cocktails helped the hurt fade until it was nothing more than a dull pinch on his pride.


End file.
